


Candy Clouds of Lullaby

by polotiz



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Somewhat-Happy Ending, Anon - Freeform, Avalance for life, F/F, Not My Fault, someone made me do it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:49:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24336163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polotiz/pseuds/polotiz
Summary: There are two images that flash in front of Ava’s eyes, and neither of them, were there opportunity for her to analyse, would make any sense.Her father, calling her name......And the dishes slipping through her fingers in the sink. They’re not finished. She’s not ready.
Relationships: Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe
Comments: 7
Kudos: 100





	Candy Clouds of Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> So I was challenged to write a ficlet to prompt "Things You said when You were Crying"
> 
> Then this happened. It turned into a little more than a ficlet. 
> 
> The original is on tumblr but thought I'd post it here for a shinier, somewhat cleaned-up version. 
> 
> Thanks anon for the prompt. This one hurt, but I loved every minute.
> 
> Title taken from Evanescence's masterpiece "Imaginary"

They’ve won.

They’ve won against the fates, against fate, against death. Zari, Astra, even Mick has had an opportunity to tempt fate.

Fate(s), plural…

Because as it happened, Charlie and her two co-captains appeared to be the best opportunity to run the damned thing.

And now, it’s Sara’s turn.

The loom glows and glows and _glows_.

“Laurel”. She murmurs, locking eyes with Ava from the beginning of the loom. Sara speaks again, and maybe, just maybe Ava imagines that Sara’s words were meant for her ears only. “…she deserved a better life. She died because of my choices.”

Ava smiles at her, bright and wide and full of the promise she knows this possibility offers Sara. Offers them both.

Family.

Charlie only nods, a smirk on her lips as she pulls at the strands from seemingly endless origins.

Ava wishes she could reach for Sara, but one hand is interwoven with golden strands and in the other she holds the very thing that ends lives. Instead Ava pours every possible touch she’s missing into the look they share between them, allowing her chest to overflow with promise.

But the moment is short-lived, because Charlie has suddenly frozen in place, and she shakes her head, a barely perceptible thing were it not the only thing they were focused on.

“Sara.” She whispers. “I’m not -“

Sara’s eyes dart away, fixing on the woman between them.

“What, Charlie?” She demands, and Ava knows Sara well enough now that she can hear in the pitch of her voice.

Charlie shakes her head again, eyes fixed on the strands in front of her, fingers weaving so quickly they themselves are golden.

“I’m not sure-“

“Come _on_ Charlie!!” Sara growls from between clenched teeth, “You can bring back Behrad, Astra’s mother, Micks uncles cousin’s former _roommate..._ but you can’t find Laurel?“

Ava can see the legends staring at them, she can practically feel the intensity of their anticipation. And something in her stutters... something scatters.

She watches Charlie shaking her head, lips parting before closing again, brows raised high.

“There’s… there’s a thread interwoven with Laurel’s.” Ava hears her stammer, and without warning, her fingers still to reveal a single golden strand, shifting and shimmering in the light. “Thousands. I’ve-“ she curls it around her fingers to reveal a knot, splitting into a tassel-like bloom of smaller, identical threads, thick and interlaced.

Ava thinks it's as ghastly as it might be considered beautiful.

“I’ve-“ Charlie’s voice is clipped, her posture stiff. “I’ve not seen it before.”

“ _So?”_ Sara hisses, jaw still tight. “Who cares? We’re Legends, we make a living out of dealing with things we’ve never seen before." She pauses only long enough to breathe and behind the dark glasses Ava imagines Sara's eyes slipping into angry slits. "Untangle them." She says. "Or get Ava to cut them so you can fix it.” 

“But-“ And suddenly, Charlie is looking in Ava’s direction, eyes wide, her face etched with an expression somewhere between shock, panic and a strange sort of… resignation… That causes Ava’s frown to deepen.

“Just fix it. _Now_ , Charlie.” Sara snaps. “We only have five minutes of immortality left before we’re toast!”

Something unusual washes over Ava. A strange realisation, like a strand of a thread she’s supposed to be tied to.

“Charlie?” She whispers, fingers tightening on the shears. “What is it?”

But Charlie stares at her only barely long enough, before shaking her head, closing her eyes, and turning away.

“It’s Ava.” She says. “These are all Ava.” And this time, the catch in her throat is strong enough to notice.

Ava blinks.

And somewhere, her heart sinks. Twists into oblivion.

“Somehow, Ava’s life is linked to Laurel’s death and I can’t untangle them in time.”

_Oh._

Ava turns to Sara, who is staring at her in muted horror.

…And in all Ava’s time with her, both enemy, friend and lover, she’s never found Sara looking so utterly _unsure_.

It sparks something within Ava. The two of them were always push and pull, after all. Something in Sara’s hesitance bolsters Ava’s confidence and she knows… she _knows_ this is the right thing. She’s seen Sara’s loves, and her hurts. She’s seen her heal from them all. Lovers, friends….

But never Laurel.

 _Oh_.

There are two images that flash in front of Ava’s eyes, and neither of them, were there opportunity for her to analyse, would make any sense.

Her father, calling her name...

...And the dishes slipping through her fingers in the sink. They’re not finished. She’s not ready.

It’s a strange memory, of all the memories to reach her at this time. Considering what she knows – considering what she’s preparing to understand, Ava finds herself oddly intrigued by the domestic picture of dishes.

_Ava-_

She blinks again, and squeezes her eyes shut, because the word, the sound is distinctly _Sara’s_ , and Ava rights herself with the memory of the two of them attempting to clean her apartment. What was their apartment.. what was theirs-

She’s putting dishes away.

Sara’s staring at her, a wistful smile on her face.

_"What-"_

_"Nothing."_

Ava's breath catches in her throat. She's never imagined dying. It always seemed impractical in her line of work, to consider her own mortality. Impractical, illogical.

But she’s different now…

Ava’s gut twists again. The pain increases to a stabbing throb.

…Ava opens her eyes, and the reality of what she feels, what she knows, makes them sting. In her minds eye, she watches the dishes pile up into her sink. Watches them overflow. Watches nobody fix it.

She sees the timer on the wall tick below four minutes.

Ava raises the shears, and looks at Sara.

“It’s alright.” She says, and with every passing second Ava knows it is. She _knows_. "It's alright." She wills a watery smile to her face as she speaks to the specks of gold in the atmosphere surrounding them. “Somewhere, somehow there’ll be a version of me in the future you could find. I mean technically-“ She shrugs, turning to the knot and thread rippling beyond Charlie’s fingers. “I was never meant to exist in the first place.”

It's a sentiment that had stung, once, but now seems like total truth. When faced with a choice- it seems practical. Logical.

Even if-

Ava’s parents’ faces come into view in her minds’ eye, in moments past when she had the opportunity to believe who they were, and she spends a moment lingering on the contours of her mother’s face, the cadences of her father’s laugh.

And it occurs to her, how strange it seems she would seek out the comfort of false memories, and still find them-

“ _Ava_.” Sara’s voice is clearer this time. "Ava _please_."

Ava takes a breath, aware of the tears now sliding down her cheeks.

She’s never imagined dying, not once.

But more than once she imagined living, because of Sara.

Ava can see her, can see Charlie, desperately trying to contain the lives at their fingertips, because of course, time and life stops for nobody and their decisions, and it’s not like they reassembled the loom just to destroy humanity because of a bit of extra angst over a clone’s life.

…Something within Ava feels more than a little cheated that before she ends her existence, the one person she’d want to end it with is barely an arms-length away and yet so distant.

Because if she had a choice, Ava would love for just one moment-

-to-

-But she remembers the stories Sara told her about Laurel, between moments of happiness bracketed by missions and challenges and all the times they didn't have each other. The look on Sara's face. The hurt in her voice.

She looks at Sara, instead.

“It’s alright, love.” Ava whispers, a hairsbreadth away from where she can’t touch Sara. “You gave me everything. You made me a whole person. This team, made me someone worth being. There is nothing more I could ask. My life, however long is was, was filled with… so much-“ She can feel the tears slipping down her cheeks, feel the hollow loss of not loving Sara forever. “Let me do this, please, Laurel was born. She deserved to live.”

A strange peace settles in the spaces between Ava’s words as she slides the shears towards the knot.

“I love you forever.”

Ava hears the sound of metal against metal as her fingers close together, then her world lurches violently to the right, and for a moment, Ava wonders if death had a strange grip on gravity or if perhaps dying in the temporal zone meant she just ended up with a terrible case of vertigo before it all came to an end-

She lives long enough to see the loom stutter, and fade, to see Charlie stagger back, collapsing against the far wall, knees drawn to her chest.

Long enough to feel a soft warmth against her body, to feel hands cradling her face, gently wiping away the tears streaking her skin.

“Ava-“ She hears the whisper, and the voice she knows so well is wobbly and wet. “Ava don’t you dare die on me you fucking jerk.”

And Ava gives herself a moment, a pause long enough to realise that she hadn’t died, she hadn’t saved Laurel, and her heart is filled with so much remorse she can’t help the sob that escapes her lips, as fresh tears slip past her temples.

“But-“ Ava curses her own hoarseness. “Sara, I didn’t want you to make that choice.”

“What, _you_?” Sara’s fingers are shaky as they trace Ava’s cheeks. “There was never a choice, Ava.”

Ava’s head has started to hurt, a pulsating sensation that reaches across her forehead. She’s confused, and she squeezes her eyes shut, but a cool hand slides to her cheek and coaxes them open again.

“Listen to me.” Sara says, her other hand finding Ava’s cheek and holding her head steady. “I lost Laurel, yes. And yes-“ Sara licks her lips. “- I want her back, so badly. But never, _never_ in exchange for your life.”

And then Sara shakes her head, passes her right hand over Ava’s forehead in a gentle swipe but then bites down on her lower lip. Her chin trembles, and she looks away in just enough time for Ava to notice thick tears spilling down her face, collecting underneath her chin and dropping to Ava’s shirt.

“I’ve spent the last ten years learning about death, Ava. But-“ Sara turns back to Ava, one hand reaching the space above her heart. “-But in the last two? I’ve learnt about life. I’ve learnt what life is… what life is with you, Ava.”

The tears are flowing in earnest now, but Ava isn’t sure how much of them are who’s.

“Sara-“

She reaches a hand up, only for it to be snatched away in a vice-like grip, which would be intimidating enough were it not for the way Sara’s fingertips gently circled Ava’s skin.

“I’m not done-“ Sara whispers. “I'm _not_ , because god forbid you ever become immortal again and have an opportunity to use the loom of fate, or get your hands on a _goddamned_ time courier… I need to make this _extremely_ clear.” She’s crying in earnest now, and Ava would argue she wouldn’t know what to do except for the fact she’s already sitting upright, her arms wrapped tightly around Sara’s body and face buried in her neck as Sara sobs into Ava’s ear. “Ava, I need you to know. I _need_ you to know. if Laurel was here now, she would slap me in the face and tell me to get my shit together because _Ava-_ "

Sara presses a palm into Ava’s chest, squeezes Ava even tighter, and she's reminded of a moment-

_'What?'_

_'Nothing.'_

Ava's fingers close around the fabric of Sara's top and she nods, even before Sara has a chance to speak the words-

“ _You_ are my future.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream at me about these two on tumblr (polotiz, becuase I can't afford to have two names I'd forget them)


End file.
